The Council of Agriculture (COA) Strengthens Ranch Sources Management to Facilitate Egg Hygiene and Safety Control Mechanism

2015-05-06

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Min-Hsien Yang, Professor, Feng Chia University, Taiwan

Mei-Chen Lo, Assistant Professor, National United University, Taiwan

Regarding health & safety in the labeling of commercial eggs, COA will strengthen management at the source side of livestock farms and coordinate with Health and Welfare Ministry to handle the joint inspection (audit) work in order to ensure health and safe consumption of eggs. This gives impetus to farmers to work on friendly production mode, due to the concerns of the status of the domestic egg industry, the consumers being burdened and the impact of industrial restructuring and other considerations, the COA also gradually constructed a communication platform for building consensus with consumers for recognition of friendly egg production systems, which lead people who are willing pay for a reasonable price, and help accelerate a friendly egg production mode.

To ensure that egg consumption is healthly and safe, COA will strengthen source management on the side of livestock farms, through related counseling conferences and sales and marketing classes to promote the concepts of right medications. Requests from local governments regularly audit poultry farms and the feed plant to sample eggs and their feed system, test drug residues, etc. If upon inspection failed, they will be punished in accordance with the regulations. As for CAS proven commercial egg and traceability of eggs, they not only request county (city) government to do sampling tests from sales (trafficking) but also appoint the certifying authority to proceed with objects identification/tracking and implement random inspection on commercial eggs.

According to the Food Safety and Health Administration Act, Article 22, paragraph 1, paragraph 5, domestic crop production certifies that traceability of origin should be disclosed; who are the qualified system producers authorized by a Central Agricultural competent authority? The COA involved in counseling farmers (or related persons?) to ensure their work in accordance with regulations, and assist the Ministry of Health and Welfare to check/audit commercial egg if the ranch labeled the name of the source, to ensure that the interests of consumers are upheld.

The annual output of about 6.8 billion eggs, and the output value of about NTD 20 billion, means that this is an important industry addrssing daily necessities.

Based on production efficiency and cost considerations, except the EU, the United States New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and other animal welfare advanced countries, are still using the traditional feeding cages as the main mode of egg production. In Taiwan, the country currently adopted traditional feeding cages to produce eggs which accounted for more than 90%.

COA reference to the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and other countries’ production mode, actively encourages those who volunteered to get involved (or participate) in the poultry industry, and encourage the promotion of certificate of friendly egg production by industry groups, animal protection organizations or any other impartial units. It will gradually construct consumer’s recognition of friendly egg production, and are willing to pay a reasonable price, with effective communication reaching the consensus of producers and consumers.